


Peak 15

by teasoni



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Bisexual Female Character, Butch/Femme, F/F, Lesbian Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Resolved Sexual Tension, Semi-Public Sex, Sharing Body Heat, Sharing a Bed, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vaginal Fingering, listen im just trying to cover all my bases here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:07:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26737852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teasoni/pseuds/teasoni
Summary: After destroying the rachni and defeating Benezia, Ashley, Shepard, and Liara become stranded in the tram station of Peak 15 by a blizzard. As night falls and the temperatures drop dangerously low, they have to find a way to stave off the cold until the storm passes... by any means necessary.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Ashley Williams
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	Peak 15

**Author's Note:**

> one day i will find a wife as strong and good as shepard but in the meantime i guess i'll just keep projecting!!!!!!

“So this is it, then.”

Liara spoke quietly, still gazing at the sealed door of Peak 15. The silence pounded around them, broken only by the shrieking of the wind outside the tram station as the snowstorm closed in. It was like being stranded in the middle of a churning sea; in a way it reminded Shepard of being deep underwater where everything was muffled and dark and impenetrable. Impossible to escape.

Benezia was dead. Shepard had - perhaps foolishly - allowed Liara to come along on the hunt. It seemed cruel, now, to have done that: seeing Liara weeping over her mother’s body brought pain to Shepard’s chest that was so deep and unbearable that she had to turn away. Grief was always too raw for her.

Now, as they stood in the tram station, Shepard listened to the gentle murmur of Ashley’s voice as she tried to comfort Liara, barely audible over the thunderous blizzard. It shed hard, grey light across the building that had already begun to fade with the onset of evening. Shepard wandered over to peer out the windows; she could see nothing, not even the jagged teeth of the mountain upon which Peak 15 was perched. Nothing.

“If we try and catch the tram back in this weather we’ll be ripped right off the tracks,” she said, interrupting Ashley’s soft condolences and drawing both her and Liara’s attention to the mounting storm. Shepard tried to raise Joker, too, but the comms fell dead. For a long few minutes they all just stared at the ash-like flurry outside the station, each scrabbling for some plan of action.

“What will we do?” Liara eventually asked. “Shepard…?”

She sounded so weak. Small. Shepard turned to see Liara half-collapsed against the bench with Ashley half-crouched beside her. Shepard’s gut lurched at the sight.

The station wasn’t as well-insulated as the rest of Peak 15. It wasn’t made for habitation - it was a transit station. Already the air was bitingly cold, and with the destruction that had taken place in the labs, the power grid was severely underpowered. Shepard’s mind raced. They would be stuck here until the storm passed, whenever that would be - by the looks of it, not soon.

“We hole up here until the storm passes,” she told them eventually, shifting her rifle over her shoulder. “Ash, you stay here with Liara while I go look for the power main.”

Ashley started forwards, desperate to go with Shepard but unwilling to leave Liara alone. “Shepard -,”

“Stay,” Shepard said again, her voice low and hard and firm, and Ashley faltered back a step. “I’ll be fine.”

She felt Ashley’s eyes on her back as she kicked open the utility vent.

The power main wasn’t hard to find. All it took was a bit of a jump-start from Shepard’s omni-tool and a few pieces of well-placed code to reroute the systems to the tram station. Still - most of the infrastructure holding Peak 15 together had been blitzed during their showdown with Benezia, and even with all the power directed to the station the lashing coldness of the storm was barely held at bay.

Thankfully the control bunker came equipped with emergency kits. Shepard and Ashley laid out whatever supplies they could scrounge up, constructing a crude kind of nest from blankets and thermal canvas.

“You think we’re gonna have to spend the night?” Ashley asked as she stared out at the storm. It hadn’t weakened; if anything, it had grown even worse, mourning beyond the tramrail doors with wind that made the very foundations rattle.

“We’ll see.”

It was a painful thing having to sit and watch as night fell over Noveria. Usually, Shepard supposed, the night on a planet like this would be miraculous. The white mountains formed a long, crooked spine beneath the stars, and in such a hostile climate there wasn’t likely to be much light pollution, meaning that their view out into the galaxy would be perfect. Part of Shepard wished she could’ve seen it. But there was no hope of that so long as the blizzard lashed around them, thick and as black as oil. Even the lights from the tramrail were utterly invisible, swallowed up by the snow.

“This sucks,” Ashley said abruptly, her voice forced out by sheer irritation. “We almost get eaten by spiders and blasted into pieces by a crazy asari - no offence, Liara - and now  _ this _ .”

Shepard chuckled, and Ashley caught the glimmer of her teeth in the near-darkness. Sharp teeth, she remembered, for an equally sharp kind of woman. She crammed her hands between her thighs to try and warm them, swallowing down her shivers as best she could. Liara sat nearby. Asari, she explained, were not as affected by the cold as humans were, and while Ashley and Shepard had been able to manage well enough for the first few hours, the plummeting nighttime temperatures were beginning to wear on them. Liara was disjointed; she was lost in her own thoughts, and neither Ashley nor Shepard felt it was appropriate to take her from them. They shared a look heavy with grief.

The seconds stretched to minutes to hours - time hung suspended in the storm, as if it didn’t exist at all. They grew colder. Shepard’s armor was heavier, more insulated, and she took care to try and keep moving. Ashley was not so lucky - her own armor was lighter, and she felt the biting cold as it seeped through the seams of it, even when she was wrapped in the emergency blankets. She was able to hide her shivering, at first, but soon her teeth began to chatter, and Shepard glanced at her with eyes bright with worry.

“You’re freezing,” Shepard muttered when she crouched by Ashley, who lay curled up tightly in a cocoon of foil and canvas. “Christ. Come on - move.”

Gracelessly, Shepard bullied her way into Ashley’s space, bunkering down beside her beneath the blankets. It was uncomfortable and clumsy and did very little to warm either of them, and the thought of being so close to her commanding officer made Ashley almost nauseous. Especially  _ Shepard _ , who she admired, who she -

No. She couldn’t think of that now. Not here, not when Shepard’s eyes were so irrefutably fixed on her, close enough that Ashley could see the color of them even in the darkness. She could…  _ smell _ her. She’d never been close enough to smell Shepard before, not like this, not - intimately. The breath she pulled in was shaky. Like… sun. Warm, honeyed, but there was something hard there, too, something unforgiving.

“You okay?” Shepard asked, and - God help her - her voice was so low it was little more than a chest-deep rumble. Ashley, still shivering, nodded.

Shepard looked up over her head at Liara, who was still meditating by the window. Then she moved, shuffling around and working her hands at her armor. “Take it off.”

“What?” Ashley demanded, alarmed. Panic rose tight in her throat, but Shepard didn’t seem to notice. She was already too busy working open her suit.

“Take your armor off. We’re going back to basics.” She paused and gave Ashley that same smile, the one that showed the tiniest bit of teeth. “Don’t tell me you’re going shy on me, Williams.”

Ashley swallowed indignantly. Her pride rattled around in her ribs, and eventually it managed to win out over that other black, slithering thing she was feeling, and she fumbled with trembling fingers at her suit. Her fingers were numb; she couldn’t find traction, could barely feel the ridges of her armor, and eventually Shepard let out a grunt and shoved her hands away to do it herself.

Shepard was not a soft woman. She was bulky, enormous both in stature and temperament, and she was _jacked_ _like a fucking Amazon._ Just as tall, too - taller than any woman Ashley had ever seen, even in the military. Ashley couldn’t see it, all wrapped up and in the dark, but she could feel it. Shepard discarded their suits piece by piece, and soon all those hard angles and uncomfortable, digging ridges were gone. No matter where Ashley put her hands, some part of them always seemed to be touching the woman beside her, or brushing against the weave of her flight suit. The space between them grew warmer, slowly, their body heat trapped in by the blankets.

“We’re like penguins,” Ashley forced out, laughing tightly - anything to break the silence. To hide the way her breath refused to settle. It was a stupid thing to say, she knew that, but she didn’t anticipate how dangerous it was, because it made Shepard laugh low and soft in her throat, and it was enough to send heat lancing up through Ashley’s belly.

She wasn’t cold anymore. Fuck. This was, somehow, even worse.

They were close.  _ Really  _ close. The swell of Ashley’s chest was pressed against Shepard’s upper abdomen, one of Shepard's powerful thighs between Ashley's knees, Shepard’s breath hot against the crown of her head. They were basically - spooning, face-to-face, and it made Ashley’s whole body break out in tingles. She’d dreamed of being this close to Shepard for weeks - of being this close to nakedness, of feeling the impossible heat of her body, of being able to inhale everything about her. Perhaps she was just drunk of her own admiration, but it didn’t matter now. She was  _ here _ , pressed up against the enormous bulk of Shepard’s body, as if she’d stepped right into a wet dream.

“Ashley, what’s wrong?” Shepard asked, then, her tone sharp with concern. Ashley exhaled; she hadn’t even realized that she’d stopped breathing. The words stumbled around at the back of her throat, uncomfortable and hot, but they refused to come out. “I know this is uncomfortable,” Shepard continued. She had interpreted Ashley’s strange behavior as  _ negative _ discomfort, rather than the other kind. “But it’s necessary. Just until the storm passes. We don’t have to mention it. Ever.”

“No!” Ashley blurted out, too quickly, too loudly. Shepard frowned, and the deep crease of her brow was the most beautiful thing in the world. Stern and so  _ close _ , close enough that Ashley could put her finger on it, or kiss it away. Those thoughts rose like fire, her heart racing at a sprint - there was no way Shepard couldn’t hear it. “No, I -,”

Later, Shepard would wonder why it had taken her so long to piece it together. Someone with as much experience and as much training as her should have realized immediately. But she hadn’t, because she’d been too focused on keeping her own head above the water. Sweet, sweet irony.

“I’m sorry,” Ashley choked, unable to meet Shepard’s eyes. The way her body stiffened in wake of the realization was horrific. She’d never live it down. “This is - I -,”

“It’s all right,” Shepard murmured. She’d meant it to be soothing, but her voice came out tight. Her breath prickled in her lungs, her awareness suddenly taking on a new, startling angle. “It’s a normal reaction.” Her voice was a little tighter, and had Ashley been more lucid and less fixated on Shepard's thigh between her legs, she might have noticed it.

What was she supposed to say to that? Ashley’s mind was a firestorm. Her mouth had gone dry, her tongue swollen too big for her mouth. She breathed in deep through her nose - a mistake, she could  _ smell _ her, smell old memories and strength and something so, so delicious - and tried to make herself still.

Then she heard it.

The unmistakable gallop of Shepard’s heartbeat, right under her ear. The shudder of her breath in her throat.

Ashley craned her face up; the urge to see Shepard’s face was suddenly unbearable, where a moment ago it had seemed like the most dreadful torture imaginable. Shepard’s eyes were still and dark, her face unmoving, as if turned to stone. She barely seemed to be breathing. A moment passed - maybe more - and Ashley just  _ stared _ . Shepard was the first one to break their gaze, her eyes dropping to Ashley’s mouth, her parted lips.

_ Oh. _

“I -,” Ashley almost tripped on a choke. “I’m still cold.”

She wasn’t. God knows she wasn’t - if she grew any warmer she might just melt. Shepard knew that. Any fool would know that.

And yet, between them there was movement, Shepard’s hand finding the zipper of Ashley’s flight suit. Breaths fluttered, rapid, and at any moment Ashley expected to be wrenched from a dream. Shepard pulled down the zipper inch by torturous inch. Painfully slowly. Ashley’s groin grew tight as the zipper creeped closer, as those fingers dragged down between them, peeling her open and laying her bare. Shepard stopped just below the lean plane of Ashley’s abdomen, the calluses on her knuckles sending shocks beneath Ashley’s skin. She splayed her hand firmly over Ashley’s belly, and Ashley finally melted.

It all happened at once. Shepard’s hand, broad and rough, pressed hard against her navel; Shepard’s lips, hot and surprisingly soft, pressed against her panting mouth; Shepard’s thigh, thick and hard, pressed up against her groin.

All Ashley could do was moan into Shepard’s mouth.

Somehow they managed to wrestle their way out of their suits. There were no pretenses, now, no fantasies of professionalism; Ashley wanted more than she had ever wanted before, and Shepard was lost in the way Ashley yielded under her hands. She’d wanted this. They both had, in their own ways, since they’d first laid eyes on each other.

Shepard’s tongue dragged along Ashley’s throat, her other hand joining the first as they kneaded the girl’s waist. She was neat, muscular yet delightfully small in Shepard's grip, her skin a delightful honey-brown that tasted even better than it looked. Shepard wanted to sink her teeth into it, bite into her like a peach. Ashley had started shivering again, but this time it wasn’t from the cold.

When an aborted groan rose from Ashley’s mouth, Shepard pressed a single, panting kiss to it, hushing her gently. Hands stroking over her waist, her back, grappling appreciatively at her backside.

“Good girl,” Shepard rasped, and Ashley saw stars. She was wet - so,  _ so  _ wet, enough that her thighs had grown slick with it, that she couldn’t hope to hide it. She crushed her mouth to Shepard’s sternum and tried to breathe. Her head spun, and if it wasn’t for Shepard’s secure embrace, she might have passed out completely.

Ashley mapped Shepard’s body with her hands, trying to lay it out in her mind’s eye. Each muscle, the ridge of each scar, each slope and curve. She wanted to see it properly - maybe she would, one day, but at that moment Ashley’s mind was incapable of imagining anything other than the woman pinned to her body. Shepard.  _ Shepard. _

Shepard handled her like she was something to be adored. Firm, sure, because Shepard wasn’t soft in any way, but it was kind, and it was reverent in a way Ashley had never been touched before. Those thick fingers ghosted up her thigh, edging them open, and found the dripping gift between them. She hummed when she felt how wet Ashley was, pleased, the sound vibrating between them. Ashley felt it in the marrow of her bones.

There was a soft murmur of  _ oh, honey _ , against her lips, and Ashley gasped in return, her voice rising high and tense; Shepard licked those sharp teeth of hers like she wanted to devour Ashley on the spot.

Fuck. Ashley wanted that. She wanted it so badly.

Shepard wound her free arm around Ashley, holding her tight against her body, and Ashley clung to her, kissing wetly up the line of her neck and pressing her face against all the warmest parts of Shepard’s skin. She could taste her pulse, the thrill of her blood, and her legs fell open further as Shepard’s palm ground up against her cunt. All her awareness drew to that single point of contact, her nerves aflame.

“Fuck me,” she begged, again and again and again, the words swallowed by Shepard’s low laughter and parching kisses. Fingers teased, exploring, and  _ finally _ \- after a tad too much begging for Ashley’s pride to accept - she anchored her thumb against Ashley’s clit and sank two fingers inside. Ashley’s eyelids fluttered, her entire body clenching down, and when she could finally look at Shepard again without having an aneurysm, she found her watching like Ashley had hung the stars.

The wet noises of Shepard’s fingers fucking into her were muffled by their blankets and the howling of the storm. Liara’s humming had stopped, but neither Ashley nor Shepard had noticed. They didn’t notice anything outside each other. Ashley melted against Shepard’s body as Shepard fingered her open, hips grinding down against her palm. Soon two fingers became three, and Ashley was nearly crying from pleasure - Shepard’s experience and skill extended beyond the battlefield, it seemed. She knew how to turn, how to angle, how to stroke all the most sensitive little places inside Ashley’s body.

“I’m -,” Ashley gasped, her vision pulsing. “I’m going to -,”

“Come for me,” Shepard panted against her mouth, working her hand faster, harder, each movement as precise as it was unforgiving. Ashley bit down on a howl, and in a few more devastating strokes she was there, shuddering and coming all over Shepard’s fingers, her knees leaping shut, each muscle seizing wildly. Her entire mind seemed to switch off for a few seconds. Stars and heat and impossible things burst behind her eyelids, along every nerve, soothed only by the low timbre of Shepard’s voice in her ear.

When she finally came down from her climax, Ashley had to take a few moments to catch her breath and to remember how to speak again. Her body was slick with sweat. Her brain was definitely not working at full capacity. And Shepard - well, Shepard was just staring at her with lust-blown eyes and a strangely hesitant smile, hand stroking comforting patterns against Ashley’s belly.

“Oh my God,” Ashley sighed, blinking as her vision finally cleared. And then, less wondrous and more horrified: “Oh my  _ God _ .”

Shepard, infuriatingly, seemed to understand. “We don’t have to mention it again. This was -,”

Ashley’s panic almost blinded her, and before she knew what she was doing she’d slapped a hand square over the commander’s mouth. A pause stretched between them, heavy with uncertainness.

She couldn’t help it. With her other hand, Ashley reached down the line of Shepard’s body until she found the telltale cluster of hair between her legs.

Shepard was wet.

She was  _ very  _ wet.

Ashley watched, riveted beyond belief, as Shepard’s eyelids shivered. She slipped her fingers between Shepard’s powerful thighs, sensitive to the prickle of breath against her palm, which she moved away when Shepard didn’t push her back.

“Can I…?” Ashley was much more unsure about this - she’d never been with a woman before. She didn’t know how this sort of thing worked, but she wanted to  _ try _ . Shepard regarded her cautiously but without judgement, and it was enough to give Ashley the courage to press onwards.

She touched Shepard like she would touch herself. Shepard didn’t react as viscerally as Ashley had, but that was to be expected, and the slight twitches of her body - the tightening muscles, the shift of tendons in her neck, the soft sounds she would sigh out occasionally - were perhaps the most arousing things Ashley had ever experienced. To see  _ Commander Shepard _ come apart, piece by piece, thread by delicate thread… it was intoxicating. Ashley could have watched it forever.

Shepard came surprisingly quickly; she gave a single shudder, baring her teeth and hissing out a near-silent  _ fuck _ . She seized Ashley’s wrist, dwarfing it with her own huge hand, and rutted against it once, twice, before growing still.

And then she kissed her, and Ashley felt her panting breaths, smelled her sweat, and knew she had fallen deeply, deeply in love.

The storm raged. Liara remained by the window in a haze of memories. Shepard gathered Ashley’s body to her own and held her there, warmer than Ashley could ever remember being.

“We should talk about this,” Shepard mumbled, her voice stifled against Ashley’s hair. 

“Later,” Ashley replied, already brushing close to slumber.

Later. Right now, all she wanted to think about was Shepard.

**Author's Note:**

> press f to pay respects to liara, who heard absolutely everything


End file.
